Ford to host winter festival at Michigan Central Station during auto show

Ford is working to weatherize train station for a $350 million renovation

Ford Motor Co.

The Michigan Central Station Winter Festival in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood will feature live graffiti painting that will be projected on the train station.

Ford Motor Co. has planned a 10-day winter festival in front of Michigan Central Station to coincide with the Detroit auto show.

It's the last North American International Auto Show to take place in the winter (it's moving to June in 2020) and the first winter with Ford presiding over the mammoth Corktown train depot.

The Dearborn-based automaker will project regular 3-D light shows onto the building Jan. 18-27, paired with live music, food trucks, drink stations, ice carving and kids activities, according to a news release.

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Ford Motor Co.

The Michigan Central Station Winter Festival will include a heated tent with an exhibition of train station artifacts and stories of its history.

The Detroit Historical Society is also curating an exhibition of artifacts from the long-vacant depot, which saw its last train leave in 1988 after opening in late 1913. They'll be on display in a tent in front of the station.

The festival outside Michigan Central Station along Michigan Avenue kicks off at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 18, the same night as the Charity Preview. It will run 5:30-10 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday, Jan. 20. From Sunday to Thursday, it will end an hour earlier, at 9 p.m. — aside from Sunday, Jan. 20.

In its announcement, Ford calls the planned light show a combination of "advanced 3D projection-mapping technology and old-fashioned storytelling." It will project onto the 18-story station three times an hour, telling a narrative that winds through the stations history and into its future, spokeswoman Christina Twelftree said in an email.

The 2019 public auto show days run Jan. 19-27. Ford hopes the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the auto show each year (756,397 in 2018) will journey about two miles west and take in its widely regarded revitalization project in Corktown.

Visitors can also take in the Quicken Loans Winter Blast, which expands to four weekends this year, including during the auto show.

Winter has also posed a challenge for Ford, which is working to weatherize and dry out the 105-year-old train station before it starts major work for a $350 million renovation. Michigan Central Station is the centerpiece of Ford's planned 1.2 million-square-foot, mobility-focused campus in the Detroit neighborhood just west of downtown.